


We Woke Only to Find Our Dreams Unchanged

by crankyoldman



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-02 19:26:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crankyoldman/pseuds/crankyoldman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Relationships didn’t typically explode, they fizzled or faded or simply ceased to exist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Woke Only to Find Our Dreams Unchanged

He was fairly certain that Shera was not carrying a handgun, which was an improvement on the last time he was in a similar situation.

Vincent had been thrust back into adulthood--strangely normal with only the occasional supernatural interruption--for only about five years now. Could he say he was wiser? Well, someone had once told him that repeating the same thing but expecting different result was madness.

So he kept his damn mouth shut.

“I think I’m angry, but I’ve been so sick of this for long enough that I’m not sure if I have the energy.”

He’d be lying if he said that he always thought of her as the relationship progressed. Vincent wasn’t even comfortable using the word ‘relationship’ even. So here he sat, in the kitchen of Cid’s house, watching as Cid’s soon to be ex wife threw a teapot out the window.

“There. That’s out of the way. I feel a little better.”

Maybe it would have been better if she had a handgun.

“Vincent, I need for you to explain when you started screwing my husband and why you couldn’t have told me about it _sooner?_ ”

\---

All of his crushes were inappropriate in one way or another. The girl in his kindergarten class with the long braids, the boy that smoked Junon Red under the bleachers in secondary school, his partner in the Turks, and of course, the married scientist whose husband killed him.

History had presented the pattern that whenever he liked someone it tended to border on an obsession and that only resulted in complications, frustrations, and dismemberment. The girl with the braids stole his crayons and proceeded to kick sand at him during recess for the rest of the year. The boy had kissed him and then called him a dirty slur. His partner had given him a lengthy speech about how office romances never worked out and then married a reporter.

And well, he’d dwelt for far too many years on the last one.

It was with much trepidation that Vincent realized he had developed a particularly large crush--no, the terrible gooey feeling that meant someone was probably going to remove the rest of his organs and replace them with clockworks this time--on Cid Highwind, the first man to laugh at one of his jokes since he’d come back from the dead. Steady, charismatic, profane, painfully heterosexual _Captain_ Cidney F. Highwind.

As per usual, this realization happened just as Cid was proposing to a woman that had only registered as scenery up to the moment she became Cid’s fiancee.

\---

“I never expected him to reciprocate.”

There was a steeliness to Shera that Vincent had so far not seen before, and he could see a lot of what drew Cid to her in this attitude and presence. He had to wonder when that had faded into the passive-aggressively unhappy woman he’d seen around Cid for the past year.

“That doesn’t answer my question and I don’t like to repeat myself.”

Of course, the fact that Cid seemed to have no patience at all around her and seemed to show her quite frequently some of the uglier aspects of his personality probably contributed.

“Six months.”

“Really. That’s... less than I expected actually.”

Shera had always been polite to him, in the way that people who were raised to be nice people tended to be. Her actual opinion of him up until their current situation was a huge mystery to him. Vincent’s opinion of her had been that she was smart, patient, and of utterly no interest to him. It was a selfish position to take, but people are selfish when their hearts are involved.

“He’s.. he’s my best friend.”

The way she fiddled with her ponytail suggested a nervous habit he’d never really noticed before.

“Well, once upon a time he was my best friend too.”

\---

He had, in a small and cowardly sort of way, tried to do the right thing and remove himself from the situation. But secret longings or not, it was bad form not to go to the wedding and he should have expected that Cid would send Yuffie after him. Despite all their bickering, there was an underlying fondness, and Cid had always wanted children, he’d said.

And Yuffie was exactly the sort of ridiculous person to show up every morning outside of his rented room in Kalm and blast the most horrendous modern pop music until he’d agreed to go with her.

Best friends were supposed to keep you out of trouble, or so he’d heard. His partner used to grumble about how much trouble he was for being such a ‘hotshot’, but Cid had merely given him a long look and puffed smoke out of the side of his mouth before declaring that the spare room was his new home.

Vincent had suppressed the flutter in his stomach with an appropriately manly nod, but he hoped that being around a less dramatic married couple than his last situation would calm the irrational parts of his mind.

\---

Vincent swallowed. He had almost preferred an angry Shera, because at least he could be the bad guy in the situation. But that was always the problem when people looked at failing relationships from the outside; there was always an assigned bad and good, black and white where none actually existed.

It was only dramatic for a series of small moments, quick bursts of emotion between long stretches of boredom, apathy and a tinge of resentment. Relationships didn’t typically explode, they fizzled or faded or simply ceased to exist.

“We used to be a team. Did you know we have seven patents filed jointly? We worked so well together. His faults and my faults seemed to cancel each other out. And if you could have seen him when he was younger...”

If they were friends he imagined he would have patted her back when she started to cry, or placed a comforting hand over hers. But Vincent could only sit still, like a part of the scenery. His involvement in this was purely with Cid and nothing with Shera and he regretted that. She was a very nice, very brilliant person that had deserved better.

“The worst part is I’m _relieved_. Because I’m so tired of drifting in his orbit, and yet. I wonder how many years we could have spent wasting each other’s lives.”

“I’m sorry.”

But in all reality he wasn’t sorry for anything more than getting selfish and advancing things a bit sooner than they should have advanced. Chemistry was chemistry after all. He wasn’t sorry they were going to move on with their lives, which had been in stasis for longer than he cared to think about the situation.

When Cid walked in, stubbled and ashen-faced, and put his arms around Shera until she got the cry out, Vincent could see all the children they’d failed to have, the inventions they’d failed to finish. He could see Shera’s passive-aggressive corrections and Cid’s harsh insults. And he could see two best friends who had lost themselves to a time and a place. He could see two people that really did love each other, despite all the reasons for doing so having faded into obscurity.

It was their time, not his, and he removed himself from the room.

\---

It had been the fourth Meteorfall, and Vincent and his best friend were watching fireworks on the roof of the house. Shera was inside, since she had a dislike for the loud noise the blasts made. The children of Rocket Town residents were running through the streets with questionably safe sparklers and eating ridiculous Meteocakes. Cid had been explaining what chemicals made the fireworks different colors when he got distracted by some of the children.

_She’s not going to have kids, you know. Says she had a procedure done because she didn’t want them and it’s not reversible._

His wife was always more of an implied thing between them, a person that Vincent barely noticed at the dinner table when he would ask Cid what he was working on. Because Cid had a tendency to fill the entire room with his dreams, and Vincent had always wanted to curl up in them and never worry about disjointed nightmares or the perils of modern appliances again.

_I always imagined us with a whole fuckin brood, when I realized I wanted her and not that damn stupid leggy girl from Finances. I was going to propose to her after I went into space, you know, the first time. Wasn’t even actually dating her then just I knew that we fit together and... hell, you should have seen her then. Now look where the fuck we are._

He’d heard this sort of thing before, only she had been talking about proteins and not being taken seriously in the scientific community. Or he had been talking about how he missed a home that had never really embraced him and he wished that he could celebrate Lunar New Year without whispers from old ladies in the temple. Vincent knew that doing the same thing and expecting different result was madness.

So he kissed his best friend and accidentally burned his forearm on the man’s forgotten cigarette.

_What in the fuckin hell were you thinking?!_

He did a different thing, because the madness had to stop. Vincent had to do something. Anything. Or else he was going to go lock himself into the nearest box a six foot tall man could fit into and not come out until the world really ended.

_I wasn’t._

And Cid certainly hadn’t either because before Vincent had burned his arm, he’d been kissing back.

\---

“She’s keeping the damn house. Can’t say I blame her but I fuckin hate moving.”

They were consistent in their behavior towards each other. In this present, things were stable. Surely any future was bound to be less than ideal, but Vincent’s obsessions never contained perfections as much as presence. And they were awkward-close and Cid had put out a cigarette on his boot.

“I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yeah, if you hadn’t been here I wouldn’t have anyone to help carry my shit.”

For Cid’s sake, Vincent would not file away how his voice shook a little and how he could see Shera looking out the window from the corner of his eye.

“We’ll borrow Tifa’s truck. It will... it will be alright.”

_Maybe some time and space will bring your best friend back to visit, Shera._


End file.
